by Ben Hogwood Image unknown credit, used courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day 150 years ago, the first performance of Brahms’s Symphony no.1 in C minor took place in Karlsruhe, under the baton of his friend Felix Otto Dessoff.

Just four days after the premiere of his lesser known String Quartet no.3, Brahms crossed a significant threshold in his life with the first airing of his foray into the symphony. It was a fraught process, for Brahms felt the hand of Beethoven on his shoulder, creating a pressure he found almost impossible to evade. With a self critical approach it was a long while before the symphony appeared, but the universal verdict is that it was well worth the wait!

From its grand, darkly shaded introduction, the symphony demands and keeps the listener’s attention throughout. The tautly argued first movement is followed by a slow movement of Autumnal beauty, then an Intermezzo that flows easily, with a soft clarinet solo. The finale is perhaps the most indebted to Beethoven, adopting a similar ‘darkness to light’ journey of the Choral symphony, but Brahms’s themes and their development are original. The final chorale feels like a deserved victory.

You can listen to the symphony in one of my favourite recordings below, with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Claudio Abbado:

Published post no.3,068 – Wednesday 4 November 2026